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Hi, my name is Rick and I am an indexer. That means I invest almost exclusively in extremely low-cost, market-matching index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Many of my investment analyst peers don’t think highly of me because I’ve given up trying to compete against markets. I make no excuse for my diehard belief in indexing. It’s not that I don’t believe others can’t beat the market, I just know that odds are against me doing it.

And it’s not that I’m untrained — far from it. I have a bachelor’s degree in business administration, a master of science in finance and I hold the coveted Chartered Financial Analyst designation. I’ve also been researching and writing about the markets for over two decades.

How did I come to this revelation? It started about 30 years ago.

As a young, impressionable man in my early twenties, I held the belief that stockbrokers and other personal financial advisors were skilled professionals. Their advanced training in accounting and economics allowed them to know things about the markets that common folk like me could not possibly know or understand. Because they were trained so well and made good decisions, clients made a lot of money, investment firms made a lot of money, and brokers made a lot of money. Well, that’s what I thought.

When I was hired as a stockbroker in the late 1980s, I naturally followed the sage advice of the analysts at my firm and did what the experienced stockbrokers in my office did. I thought by doing this I would select sound investments for my clients and do well for myself.

For several different reasons, many investment recommendations from the experts didn’t turn out as expected. Some ideas cost my clients a lot of money. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that the investment ideas from my firm and every other Wall Street firm had no better chance of winning than flipping a coin — or worse.

The funny thing about this truly mediocre investment advice is that no one seemed to care. The analysts didn’t care if they were right or wrong, the brokers didn’t care, and the firm didn’t care. We were hitting our revenue goals, and that’s all anyone cared about.

This revelation created a dilemma in my life. While I had hoped to build a successful book of business based on following the guiding light of my firm’s expert recommendations, it wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen! There was no incentive on Wall Street for it to happen. The brokerage business doesn’t track how much money investors make, it only tracks how much money brokerage firms make from commissions, fees and trading spreads.

Luckily, our brokerage firm had a portfolio management service that provided high-net-worth clients with direct access to top independent advisory firms. These managers were paid based on the percentage of assets they managed, rather than collecting commissions and spreads through trading. The percentage of assets method provided an incentive for the managers to invest well, so that their clients’ wealth accumulated and they would collect higher fees.

Private portfolio management seemed like a win-win solution. If these managers performed well, my clients would make money, the managers would earn more fees, my firm would get their cut, and I would get my piece. It was a recipe for success.

Portfolio management turned out to be a loss-win proposition. The clients lost and everyone else won. As a group, professional money managers were no more capable of beating the market than a bunch of monkeys throwing darts at the stock pages of The Wall Street Journal. This gravy train kept rolling because my firm would fire the bad managers and herald their replacements as superstars. It was a revolving door of managers with the clients caught in the spin.